Many command line utilities ask you to add certain things to the PATH. (eg. /var/root/bin)

So I thought I'd post a thread on how to do so... Here it is.

It's also on my site, link in the signature.

The PATH environment variable is a colon-delimited list of directories that your shell searches through when you enter a command.

Program files (executables) are kept in many different places on the Unix system. Your path tells the Unix shell where to look on the system when you request a particular program. Having more directories in your path will reduce the number of times you get "Command not found" errors, but might put you at greater risk of activating a Trojan horse.

To find out what your path is, at the Unix shell prompt, enter:

echo $PATH

Your path will look something like the following.

/usr2/username/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:.

You will see your username in place of username. Using the above example path, if you enter the ls command, your shell will look for the appropriate executable file in the following order: first, it would look through the directory /usr2/username/bin, then /usr/local/bin, then /usr/bin, and finally the local directory, indicated by the . (a period).

To modify your path

If you are using csh or tcsh, at the shell prompt, enter:

setenv PATH $PATH\:/dir/path

If you are using sh, ksh, or bash, at the shell prompt, enter:

PATH=$PATH\:/dir/path

In all cases, replace /dir/path with the directory you want the shell to search.

Note: The earlier entries in the path take precedence over the later ones. If you want the directories you add to your path to take precedence, then in the examples above, replace $PATH\:/dir/path with /dir/path:$PATH .
If you want to make these changes permanent, then add the commands described above to the end of your .cshrc file (for csh and tcsh), .profile file (for sh and ksh), or .bash_profile file (for bash).

EDIT*

Thank you to "WildPalms" for commenting on the article, and clarifying that the former export command is not needed.

Here is the one-line command: export PATH=$PATH:/new_path_entry

*Note* this does not apply to all shells or environments but works on OS X

Thank you for the tutorial but it's not very useful if you want your path info to be remembered and usable by all shells. The way you're doing it the path won't be saved for the next terminal window you open and you'll have to redo the whole process all over again; not fun.

If you want to permanently alter your path for all users and all shells in OS X you need to edit the /etc/paths file.

To do this open a terminal window and type: sudo pico /etc/paths

You'll be prompted for your password and then it will open the paths file in a text editor (you can do "sudo vi /etc/paths" if you hate easy to use editors). Now you can edit your paths and they will be remember the next time you open your terminal window.

Note: You will have to exit and re-enter the shell for the path to be seen.